Spring 2019 Cihan Tuğal Barrow 402 488 Barrows Hall Tuesday 12-2pm [email protected] SOC 280C POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY This course will explore the changing relations between politics, society, violence, domination, and the state. We will start with classical texts of sociology and map out the contending perspectives on the roots of political dynamics. Throughout the course, we will study the Marxist tradition (and its focus on conflict-driven group formation) and the Weberian tradition (and its focus on state-making). We will also systematically engage the Nietzschean tradition (as a call for the disintegration of both perspectives and a focus on rhizomic power) and possible syntheses of two or three of the above (such as Gramscian and Bourdieusian perspectives). The exploration of these perspectives will be interwoven with the study of the following topical and empirical questions: 1) What is the role of politics in producing and sustaining social order, domination, and change? 2) What is the state’s relation to classes, ideology and culture? How do cultural categories shape the formation of the state? 3) How do we draw the line between society and state? How does this differentiation develop historically? Where are institutions like political parties located in this differentiation? 4) How do non-state actors engage in politics? What relations do they seek with the state? What are the roles of culture and class in this engagement? 5) What is the role of politics in supposedly universal trends such as rationalization and bureaucratization? 6) How do states act in an international/global order? What impact do other actors have on the making of global order? 7) What is the relation between the development of capitalism and state formation? We will evaluate what each of these perspectives have to contribute to our understanding of substantive issues such as social movements, nationalism, religion, state formation, coercion, populism, race, revolutions, and subject formation. The readings will have an international focus. The second part of the course will focus on populism, fascism, and race. We will discuss these in the context of established frameworks, but will also raise the possibility that sociology has to be refashioned to speak to our turbulent era. As we approach what seems to be the end of the political formations associated with capitalism (liberalism, democracy, etc.), we will look back at the two major movements (left-wing populism and fascism) that attempted (but failed) to surpass capitalism and its political forms. (The other major anti-capitalist movement of the 20th century, communism, will be introduced and discussed in the first three weeks of this course, but its analysis will constitute a background theoretical framework with which we evaluate ongoing challenges to capitalism, liberalism, and modernity). It has become misleadingly fashionable (though still inevitable) to compare Trumpism with fascism, but the public debate misses greater continuities and discontinuities 1 between the interwar era and our predicament. We will contextualize the globally resurgent right- wing extremism (and the receding left-wing challenges to the neoliberal era) to better understand the current climate of polarization and authoritarianism. The course has two goals: introducing you to the contested “canon” of political sociology; and making use of this literature for your research. In the service of the second goal, you are expected to write a research proposal as the final paper. The paper needs to address the readings we have covered. A two-page (double space) proposal for the final paper is due on March 12 (electronically, before class). The final paper (15-20 pages, double space, size 12 font, Times New Roman, 1 inch margins) is due on May 13 (5 pm). Each late day will bring down your grade one notch. Starting with March 19, a student (or group of students) will present and discuss each week’s readings. S/he will also discuss the relation of these readings with other books and articles (by picking 5-7 articles and books listed below one of the sections under “Further readings” + any appropriate additional texts) and broader political sociology. You need to consult the instructor before you finalize the list of books and articles you will present. The task of the discussant(s) will include summarizing the important points of the readings (including “Further readings” and additional texts) and coming up with discussion questions to guide the conversation. This exercise is essential for “finding your voice” within political sociology. You need to plan ahead and start reading the relevant texts as soon as possible. PART I. MAJOR PERSPECTIVES IN POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY 1) CLASSICS Marx, Karl. 1978. “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” in The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition. New York: EE Norton. Pp. 594-617 Weber, Max. 1958. “Politics as a Vocation” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 77-128. Further readings: Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1978. [1848]. “The Communist Manifesto” in The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition. New York: EE Norton. (Pp. 469-483) Lenin, V.I. 1999 [1902]. What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement. New York: International Publishers. Michels, Robert. [1911] 1962. Political Parties: a Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Free Press. Weber, Max. 1958. “Bureaucracy” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. 2 Weber, Max. 1958. “Class, Status and Party” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. Weber, Max. 1978. “The Types of Legitimate Domination” in Economy and Society: Volume I. Berkeley: University of California Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1951. Totalitarianism: Part III of the Origins of Totalitarianism. New York. Harcort Brace Jovanovich Publishers. Tocqueville, Alexis. (2000) [1848]. Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin and Stein Rokkan. 1967. Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York: Free Press. Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1981 [1959]. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. (Chapters 1 & 2 & more, depending on student interest). Dahl, Robert. 2005. Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. 2nd Edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Huntington, Samuel. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Domhoff, G. William. 1998. Who Rules America? Power and Politics in the Year 2000 (Third Edition). Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company. Mills, C. Wright. [1956] 1957. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press. Beck, Ulrich. 1994. “The Reinvention of Politics: Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization,” pp. 1-55 in Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2) NEO-MARXISM Gramsci, Antonio. 2003 [1929-1935]. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York. International Publishers. Try to read the entire book. Focus on pp. 206-276, 44-120, 123-205. Further readings: Poulantzaz, Nicos. 1975 [1968]. Political Power and Social Classes. London: Verso. Miliband, Ralph. 1969. The State in Capitalist Society. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Poulantzaz, Nicos. 1969. “The Problem of the Capitalist State” New Left Review 58: 238-62. 3 Miliband, Ralph. 1970. “The Capitalist State: Reply to Nicos Poulantzas” New Left Review 59: 53-60. Poulantzas, Nicos. 1974. Fascism and dictatorship: the Third International and the problem of fascism. London: NLB. Block, Fred. 1987. “The Ruling Class Does Not Rule: Notes on the Marxist Theory of the State” in Revising State Theory: Essays in Politics and Postindustrialism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Przeworski, Adam. 1985. Capitalism and Social Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Jessop, Bob. The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity 2002 Moore, Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press. Anderson, Perry. 1974. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: NLB. de Leon, Cedric, Manali Desai, and Cihan Tuğal. 2015. Building Blocs: How Parties Organize Society. Stanford University Press. 3) STATE-CENTERED APPROACHES: CORE ARGUMENT AND METHODOLOGY Skocpol, Theda. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burawoy, Michael. 1989. “Two methods in search of science: Skocpol vs. Trotsky.” Theory and Society 18/6: 759-805. http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/methodology/two%20methods.t%26s.pdf Further readings on the mainstream and/or state-centered theorization of revolution: Tilly, Charles. 1978. From mobilization to revolution. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. Goldstone, Jack. 1991. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gould, Roger. 1995. Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune. Chicago: University of Chicago. Tilly, Charles. 1993. European Revolutions, 1492-1992. Cambridge, UK: Blackwell 4 Publishers. Goodwin, Jeff. 2001. No Other Way Out. Cambridge University Press. Weyland, Kurt. 2009. “The Diffusion of Revolution: ‘1848’ in Europe and Latin America.” International Organization 63: